It is fairly common for plural appliances to be installed at a single premise such as a residential home, an office building, or a commercial establishment. For instance, a refrigerator, a microwave oven, a cooking appliance having a stove and/or oven, heating and/or cooling systems can be installed. Modern appliances are more sophisticated than their earlier counterparts, and often include microcontrollers or microprocessors that allow a user greater interaction with the appliance. For example, an appliance can be programmed or reprogramed as well as provide diagnostic information.
The Internet has given rise to worldwide connectivity for many types of devices. However, appliances have traditionally had only standalone capabilities which required operation without cooperation or communication between other devices. As a result, current status information regarding the appliance could not be determined without being physically present at the appliance.
Recently, network adapters have been added to appliances to provide communications between such appliances and a remote device. Often such network adapters are configured to permit appliances to join a customer's home WiFi network to permit communications between the appliances and, for example, an application installed on the customer's smart phone, home or work computer, tablet computer, or other device by which the customer may bi-directionally communicate with the appliance.
In some instances, however, there may be a loss of communications between appliances and, for example, a smart phone application such as in instances where the appliance is transitioning from one WiFi network to another. In such instance it would be desirable to provided alternative forms of communications to permit the appliance to inform a customer's phone immediately when it has joined the new WiFi network or otherwise needs to communicate with the customer in the absence of a normal WiFi connection.